


a merry little christmas

by redundant



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Christmas Fluff, M/M, Mistletoe, Truth Spells, can you see where this is going
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 01:56:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13113513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redundant/pseuds/redundant
Summary: “Hey, Sam,” says Dean. “Wanna explain what the hell is going on?”The smile widens. Dean thinks he preferred the knife at his throat a couple minutes ago. “It’s Christmas, Dean.”“It’s December 23rd,” Cas points out quietly.-meaningless fluff of the christmas variety





	a merry little christmas

At first, it’s- strange, yeah, but weirdly sweet.

Sam’s got it into his head that they’re going to do Christmas this year, and they’re going to do it _right_. He and Eileen found a box of decorations in some godforsaken, far-flung room in the bunker that Dean’s half-sure might not even exist, but hey. They’re having fun, and Dean isn’t a _complete_ grinch, okay; he doesn’t question it. He walks down the stairs one December morning to find his brother and his brother's girlfriend have draped it with tinsel and lights. He goes into the library the next morning to find little sparkly reindeer figurines on the shelves. And- okay, the elves positioned around various rooms are a little creepier, sure, but it’s still Christmassy. Sam’s still smiling. Eileen’s staying. Cas is- well, Cas, and Cas is around, which is a nice change. It’s all good.

It’s only when Dean wakes up at fuck o’clock in the morning, choking on a mouthful of flour, to find everything he owns covered in white that he realises this is getting out of hand.

The bunker’s floors are quiet as he creeps, as stealthy as he can be while covered in flour, across the corridor to Cas’ room. He nudges the door open. The room is decidedly un-floured. Cas is nestled up in a pile of blankets, sleeping- he knew it, he _knew_ that sonofabitch was lying- but there are more pressing matters than proving Cas wrong: namely, he’s pretty sure two-thirds of his closest family are possessed.

Dean moves closer to the bed, switches on the side-table lamp. The only things visible out of the blanket pile are Cas’ socked feet and the slight frown on his face as he buries his face into the pillow.

“Cas,” he hisses, keeping his voice low. There’s a small chance Sam and Eileen are awake and moving around the bunker, and he doesn’t wanna take it. “ _Cas_. Wake up.”

A small groan. Cas’ eyelids open, and then they widen a little more and there’s a flash of silver in the low, yellow light. Cold metal bites at Dean’s throat before he knows what’s happening.

“JesusshittingChristCasit’smeputtheknifedown-”

“Oh,” says Cas, far, far too close. His breath puffs warm against Dean’s face. “It’s you.” He slumps back into bed, gives Dean a once-over. “Why are you white?”

“First off, that’s racist. But more importantly, I think Sam and Eileen might be possessed.”

Cas’ eyes are narrowed, scrutinising. “Alright then,” he says gravely, and pulls the blanket over himself again.

“Cas, I’m being serious.”

His voice is muffled by the blankets. “I’m sure you are.” Dean didn’t think it was possible for a pair of socks to look patronising, but here they are, and here he is, covered in flour at four in the morning talking to a pair of green knitted nightmares that won’t listen to him.

“Come on, man. This negativity isn’t good for you.”

“It’s too early for this.”

“It’s always too early for anything with you,” Dean mutters.

“Dean, it’s four a.m.”

“Excuse me, did you not hear the word _possessed_ -”

“This is ridiculous. They’re having harmless fun.”

“Think about it,” Dean insists. “The Christmas thing started off okay, but you have to admit the elves were weird.”

Cas’ head pokes out, wearing Disgruntled Scowl in #5. It’s a little adorable, but Dean doesn’t have time to think about that: he’s proving a goddamn point. “All Christmas traditions are weird to me.”

“Oh, you are _not_ pulling the whole _I’m-an-angel-what-would-I-know-of-you-humans_ shtick again. You’ve spent enough time with us to know about-”

“Dean.”

“-human life and, and, traditions and cultural phenomena, and-”

“Dean.”

“-it’s been eight years, asshole-”

“ _Dean._ ”

“What?”

Cas points his chin toward the door. Dean turns.

Sam stands just inside the doorway, resplendent in reindeer ears, his entire torso draped with tinsel and weakly flickering Christmas lights. There is a smile on his face that Dean’s only seen on two-year-olds and the truly deranged, made worse by the fact he’s silhouetted against the faint light from outside. As he lifts a hand in greeting, there is the faint tinkling of bells.

“Hey, Sam,” says Dean. “Wanna explain what the hell is going on?”

The smile widens. Dean thinks he preferred the knife at his throat a couple minutes ago. “It’s Christmas, Dean.”

“It’s December 23rd,” Cas points out quietly from behind Dean.

“It’s Christmas.”

“Okay,” says Dean. “It’s Christmas. That’s wonderful. No, I was asking more about the whole flour situation.”

Sam is now positively beaming. “I made it snow, Dean.”

“Did you now.”

Sam nods, and the reindeer ears jingle. “I made it snow.”

“Great. You wanna close the door?”

“Sure thing,” Sam grins. “Merry Christmas.”

Dean smiles weakly, and watches as the thing that used to be his brother retreats, clinking and flickering. The second the door shuts, he turns. Cas looks far, far more awake.

“You don’t think that was weird?” Dean 

Cas’ voice is slow, hesitant. “His behaviour was certainly stranger than usual.”

“So I’m right.” Cas opens his mouth, but Dean cuts him off. “You think I’m right.”

“I’m not saying you are-”

“Cas, this isn’t about a stupid _point_.” It kind of is, but Dean’s allowed his quiet victory. “You gonna help me or not?”

The silence stretches out, broken by a crash of what sounds suspiciously like more decorations from somewhere beyond the door. Dean winces.

“If you get flour on my bed,” Cas says at last, “so help me God, I will destroy you.”

***

Later, after Dean’s got all the flour off him, when the sun’s actually up in the sky and it’s not _four in the goddamn morning_ , and Cas has inhaled a cup of coffee and is on his second, and Dean’s working his way through some leftover spaghetti he found at the back of the fridge, they make a start on figuring out what’s going on.

“It’s not demons,” says Cas.

“Oo ‘ink-” Dean swallows the bolognaise, then continues. “You think so?”

“The wards on the bunker still work, and your brother and Eileen both have anti-possession tattoos. No demon could possess them.”

“Point,” Dean allows. “Not possession, then. A spell?”

“Perhaps. It would have to be an extremely specific spell, though.”

Dean _hmm_ s his agreement. “Ghosts.”

“The bunker isn’t haunted, Dean.”

“Ghosts,” Dean insists. “Charles Dickens, dude. He knew what he was about.”

“Are you referring to-”

“A Christmas Carol.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“The guy was a good storyteller, Cas. Which you would know if you actually read the book, or watched the movie like I asked you to last week.”

“Are you still stuck on that?”

"Of course I'm not! I’m just saying-”

“Dean, I was busy.”

Dean glares at Cas over his fork. “Busy doing what, exactly?”

Cas has this thing, sometimes, as part of his whole _I’m-an-angel_ shtick, where he acts all innocent and cherubic and _who, li’l old me?_ and the finger of blame is pointed elsewhere.It’s complete bull, and Dean sees right through it. And, see, Cas does this thing sometimes where he knows the jig is up and he tries to regain what dignity he can, usually by confessing as quickly and quietly as he can; Dean stares him down with narrowed eyes, knowing it’ll just be a few moments before he cracks.

And there it is.

“Watching Brooklyn Nine Nine,” Cas mumbles into his coffee.

“I knew it,” Dean declares, stabbing the fork into the pasta with relish. “I knew it, you sonofabitch.”

“Dean. We need to get back to the point.”

“We’ll get back to that later. Listen: freaky shit, Christmas- it's probably a ghost.”

Cas sips his coffee and doesn’t respond. Dean scowls at him.

“Okay then, what do you think?”

“This all started a few days ago.”

“Is that a question,” Dean asks around his fork, “or-”

“I’m trying to figure out what could have triggered this sort of behaviour.”

“It was after they found those stupid decorations.”

Cas looks at Dean. Dean looks at Cas.

“Maybe it was an object-” Cas starts slowly.

“-in the decorations,” Dean continues.

“-that they both made contact with and then-”

“-made them go beserko, right-”

“-and so we need to-”

“-destroy the object and break the curse-”

“-but the problem is,” Cas says, and his brow is furrowed, “the problem is, we don’t know what object it is.”

“Right,” says Dean.

“And with the state Sam is in, I think destroying every decoration in the bunker would have unfortunate consequences.”

“Right.”

“So we need to figure out which object it is and then-”

“Right.” Dean sets down his fork with a victorious thunk. “Salt and burn.”

Cas smiles over the top of his mug. “Exactly.”

They sit in pleased silence for a moment.

“How do we find the object, again?” Dean asks.

***

“This is going to work,” Cas says doubtfully.

“Sounding real sure of yourself there, pal.”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

They’re standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at the war room where Sam and Eileen are currently arranging a Christmas tree, all gross and sappy and in like-like. A fairly harmless activity, Dean would think, were it not for the fact that they already have one in the library, one in the garage, and one, as of two hours ago, in the kitchen. Dean doesn’t even know where they got the trees from. Cas holds a mortar and pestle, and the powder that is, as stated by a moth-eaten and probably highly inaccurate scroll they found in the library, a truth spell. According to the lore, it’ll react only when it can give a response to the question asked by the user. According to Dean, this is the kind of thing one would be hard-pressed to find anywhere outside of a harlequin romance- not that he reads them- and in any case, it reeks of witches.

“No,” Dean admits. The elf on the railing is staring at him funny, and he represses a shudder. Moth-eaten and highly inaccurate is as good as it’s gonna get. “Let’s do this thing.”

They make their way methodically through the bunker, sprinkling the powder on every damn decoration they can find: baubles, reindeer, elves, lights, and at one point a small angel figurine Dean shows gleefully to Cas. It’s like he’s stuck in a Lifetime Christmas special or another dimension.

“Any luck?” Cas calls over from the coat rack, where he’s investigating another one of the hellish elves. It may not be the object that’s causing all this, but Dean’s gonna salt and burn it after all this is over, just for luck.

“No dice. How sure are you that this spell even works?”

“Not very.” Cas’ sleeves are rolled up now, and his hair rumpled, which Dean shouldn’t find as endearing as he does considering that’s its natural state, but hey.

“Great,” says Dean, and they continue on. On through the entrance and the corridor, through the library, the gym, the kitchen, and through rooms Dean didn’t know existed that have somehow been found by Sam and Eileen; rooms full of jars and vials and strange, misshapen objects, musty and dark, the air ancient. They leave, Dean resolving to get back to them later, and Dean’s legs actually hurt by the time they get to the bedrooms. And they check them. Sam’s is okay. Dean’s is okay. Cas’ seems fine, and they’re heading out, about to go down to the lower rooms (more goddamn walking) when Dean sees something hanging in the doorway.

“Hey,” says Dean. “Mistletoe.”

Cas’ face, as Dean can see it out the corner of his eye- he doesn’t wanna scare Cas off, and eye contact when they’re shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway is a little weird- is entirely neutral. “I didn’t see that this morning.”

Dean can play it cool. He absolutely, totally can. He was _born_ to play it cool. “Neither did I. Sam and Eileen must’ve got here before we did.”

“Right.”

They’re very close- so close the mortar and pestle are digging into Dean’s hip- and Cas’ mouth is soft in the glow of the bunker. “Well,” says Cas, and Dean glances up from his lips to his eyes, “far be it from me to disregard a Christmas tradition.” And Dean’s a big boy who wears big boy pants and uses big boy words on a daily basis, but all he can manage now is a strangled sound that might be _sure_ , might be _hurk_ before Cas leans in and kisses him.

It’s over much quicker than Dean would like, and he opens his eyes. Cas’ eyes are still on Dean’s, and his face is still close.

“It’s the mistletoe,” says Cas, and Dean’s heart drops out of his chest cavity and onto the floor.

“Right,” says Dean. “Yeah. Christmas tradition. That’s cool with me.”

Cas’ face does this thing where it kind of wrinkles up in confusion like a crumpled piece of paper. “What? No, I meant for the spell.”

“Oh,” says Dean.

“Unless you didn’t want to-”

“Oh, dude, no.”

Silence. Cas shifts back a little more, and Dean realises what he’s just said.

“Yes, I mean- no- I mean-”

Cas’ hand reaches to circle Dean’s wrist, warm and steady. “Dean, did you want to kiss me or not?”

“With every fucking bone in my body,” says Dean, and looks down. There’s a little bit of the powder on his hand, and it flares a bright blue under Cas’ fingertips as Dean speaks. Dean uses his big boy brain and puts two and two together, and comes up with the angel in front of him, all _who, me?_ and yeah- of course it’s him. It’s always been him. “You little shit,” he says wonderingly.

Cas’ voice is earnest, the paper uncrumpled. “That was not intentional.”

“Well.” Dean does his utmost to ignore the flush rising on his face. “At least we know this thing works.”

“Dean,” Cas says gently.

“After we test the mistletoe. And don’t think I’ve forgotten about Brooklyn Nine Nine.”

And so they do. As Cas reaches up to dust the mistletoe, Dean’s heart rolls back up off the floor into his chest again, and settles, and starts beating faster as Cas flashes him a smile- _got it._ Dean looks up. The mistletoe is flaring blue.

“So how does this work?” Dean asks. “You talk to it, or…“

“I believe I ask it questions, and it answers me.”

“Can it even talk?”

Apparently it can. Two minutes later, and Cas and Dean have all the information they need, and Dean has a newfound understanding of the sheer amount of trash a single sprig of mistletoe can talk.

“Jesus,” says Dean after the spell wears off. “The mouth on that thing.”

“I know for a fact you’ve said worse.”

“Eh,” says Dean, and then perks up. “Hey. I fucking _told_ you it was ghosts.”

“Actually, it said it was possessed by a low-level malevolent spirit that’s currently casting a spell.”

Dean shrugs the semantics off. “Ghosts and a spell, so I was right twice.”

“This isn’t the time, Dean-”

“Admit it.”

Cas mumbles something. Dean, gracious in victory, does not ask him to repeat it louder, but it’s a near thing.

***

They salt and burn the mistletoe in the garage, because Dean’s not a heathen: he cares about fire safety as much as the next sane person, and doesn’t really want to burn Cas’ room down. The spirit ( _ha_ ) wails, tortured, and then disappears.

“Well,” says Dean over the sputtering fire. “That was anticlimactic.” He’d been preparing his best John Wayne, and now stands with his hands listless at his sides, sort of deflated.

Cas side-eyes him. “Go on.”

“But the moment’s gone,” Dean does not whine.

Something wooden nudges Dean’s hand, and it takes him a moment to realise that Cas is handing him one of the creepy elves. “And here it is again.”

Dean grins, delighted, as Cas steps back. “Yippee ki yay, motherfucker,” he says, and drops the elf into the fire.

After Dean has enough time to bask in the glory of being right (and also stopping the curse. that too), he and Cas move into the kitchen where Eileen looks a little dazed and confused, and Sam’s reindeer ears are askew on his head.

“What the fuck,” says Sam.

“Language,” says Eileen.

“He’s standing right next to you- how did you even do that?” Dean asks.

“What the hell,” says Sam. “What’s going on?”

Dean brandishes the ashes of what used to be the mistletoe.

***

And later, after they move out three of the Christmas trees (seriously, what the hell), as well as all of the remaining elves, and after they eat and drink and it’s nearing midnight and Cas has gone to his room, Dean heads back to his own. “Keep it PG,” Sam yells after him. Dean flips him the bird.

He stops by Cas’ door and nudges it open to find Cas, decidedly awake, sitting on the pile of blankets. The light from the side-table lamp is yellow and soft, and Cas is comfortably rumpled in a way that makes Dean’s throat tighten a little.

“Seriously, did you not make your bed?” Dean asks in lieu of a hello, barging in and sitting on the corner of the pile.

“I don’t have to answer that,” Cas says with dignity, and moves his leg over.

“So that’s a no, then.”

Silence stretches, cracks its neck, rolls its shoulders. Dean shifts slightly. Cas is looking at him, all warm and sleepy and less than a foot away, and- shit, Dean wants to kiss him.

“So,” says Cas, and smiles.

“So,” says Dean.

“I believe we have an unresolved issue from earlier.”

“Do we, now.”

“Can we make good on the whole mistletoe thing?”

Dean pauses. “I thought this would be more romantic.”

Cas rolls his eyes, but his voice is quiet, reverent. “Come here,” he says, and kisses Dean till he sees stars.

**Author's Note:**

> this was written and posted on the same day, and is decidedly un-beta'd. any mistakes are entirely my own. hope you have a good christmas/other religious celebration! love you bye


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